Putin accuses Europe of blocking US efforts to end war in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has accused Europe of standing in the way of US efforts to end the war in Ukraine, as he began key talks in the Kremlin with Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, and the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Witkoff, on his sixth trip to Moscow this year, is to present Putin with an updated version of a US peace proposal drafted with input from a senior Russian official and reworked to make it more acceptable to Kyiv. Images released through Russian state media showed the two delegations sat on opposite sides of an oval white table.

Moments before the closed-door meeting with Witkoff and Kushner, Putin made a series of hard-edged remarks. Speaking to reporters at the Kremlin, he accused European governments of sabotaging the peace process and said that “European demands”